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The Last of Kin

Earth (I)

Earth is almost impossibly strange. Here the grass is green, the sky an insipid blue, and there is so much water. The great golden sea of Nrion back home pales in comparison to the water that covers this planet, despite Gallifrey being almost twice Earth's size.

It amazed her that the water itself was so light, free of all the heavy ions which characterized Gallifrey's ocean. Whereas Gallifrey's sea divided her world into but two continents, one twice as large as the other, here on Earth the myriad of continents and islands were confusing.
As Susan understood it, she and her grandfather had landed their stolen TARDIS in a place called Great Britain, which was a small Island, and yet the head of a mighty empire. While her grandfather had set up a small dwelling in an old junkyard, he delighted in taking her on short trips back along Earth's timeline, and perhaps even more delighted in lecturing her in the history and events they saw.

In truth, despite her grandfather's best efforts, she missed home and she was sure that he did too. Although their family was small, and often considered eccentric for choosing to live as outsiders away from the Citadel, nevertheless her parents, her father's parents, and her grandmother had lived in close proximity, among the mountains of Serenity. The estates at Mount Perdition, the foremost peak of the mountain range, were considered the closest thing to true civilization near her home, but all her memories of it consisted of running wild through the Council Lord's fields, chasing the Tafelshrews, and eating the Nisha fruit - picked straight from the orchard.

Had that all really been so recent, when it felt so long ago, like it was yet to come?

Stretching her consciousness out to touch the ocean of time, she was reassured by the impermeable fixed moments in time of her memories, of her home.
Her heart panged for it, yet her other thumped uncontrollably when she thought of going back, an image of the schism filled her mind, and rendered her paralyzed. Her conscious mind could not understand it, but when she had seen the schism and seen the past, the present and the future converge, her instincts had screamed at her to get away from Gallifrey.
She couldn't not look back, but now, just as much, she had to move forward. Strangely though, it felt very much like moving backwards, being on this planet as yet unencountered by the wider universe.

Guess that's why grandfather likes it so much.

When her grandfather had half-asked for, half-demanded her help she hadn't expected to find her knowledge of Earth history and customs being quizzed. She tried to dismiss the memories and get back to reading the assigned English history. The language itself was a curious oddity, full of strange rules and contradictions, the history not much better. Giving up on that she reached out with her thoughts again, this time to the telepathic circuits of the old Type 40, added to by her grandfather and her thoughts both. She was looking for an Earth name, a translation for her Gallifreyan one; Shoshana, Susanna, Susan, her mind was directed to.

Susan knew that her family would like it.

She smiled.

.oOo.

"I know you know where I'm being sent child, if not why. So if you're so determined to come with me, then at least show me that you have the proper knowledge to fit in." He had been more amused, than anything else by her answers. "You are still too linear in your thinking; we are not traveling to Earth in our time, but to their time of 1963. Now let's see if we can find something to make you look the part."

She had tried to interject, tried to tell him that there was no way the Council, or indeed any of the Time Lords would let him be exiled with a dimensional time shift device. He had merely grinned and taken her back to the Capitol on a transport. She'd felt a momentary thrill of fear, a lapse of reason, as they passed the Academy, reminding her of why she was leaving. However, her grandfather didn't even hesitate and strode on into the Panopticon, and once there into the Museum of Time.

It was here that he displayed a small sonic device – a screwdriver, he claimed – to her for the first time, getting access to the security console for an old TT Type 40, Mark 3 device. He'd quickly broken the code and disabled the security barriers. No matter what else was said about her grandfather, there was no denying the man was a genius.

Holding his sonic screwdriver against the device's lock, the doors sprang open, and he looked at them with something between a grimace and a grin. "Going to have to change that. People always underestimate sonic devices… it just won't do." He muttered. With that, he'd stepped inside.

She took a moment to take in the old relic of pioneering Time-Dimensional travel. It was mostly spherical in shape, with a flat bottom. Circular depressions were laid into its surface, not dissimilar to an Earth golf ball, and they shone with a warm gold light against the darkness of the closed museum.
The rest of the shell was made of a cool grey metal, with intricate circular carvings in Gallifreyan long-hand repeating the words 'time' and 'dimensions' in beautiful detail. Old High Gallifreyan symbols accompanied the circular designs, but she couldn't read them.

"Hurry along, child, we can't wait around for the Panopticon Guard to catch us, then we'll be in real trouble."

She'd sighed and turned away from the Type 40's natural appearance, afraid it was the last time she would see it like this, that the chameleon circuit would soon erase the last outward image of her home world. She stepped inside, not turning to look as the doors thudded shut behind her. Then she'd heard the noise which was like a song from her hearts, mournful and freeing all at once, as it heralded her farewell to the only world and life she'd known.

.oOo.

Susan had since coined the term TARDIS – Time And Relative Dimensions In Space – for their Type 40, and in the months they'd been together she'd worn her grandfather down to using the name as well. Of course, every time she'd tried to rub it in since he capitulated, he refused to acknowledge the name as anything other than his idea. The banter was light-hearted, she knew, but her growing companionship with her grandfather wasn't enough to stave off her longing for friends her own age. She was surprised to find the human youth very similar to those of her own race, maturing more or less at the same rate Gallifreyan's did in their adolescence.

It was for these reasons that she'd started pressuring her grandfather to let her go to school. Of course, she couldn't justify it to him like that, but she knew he'd seen right through her. Nevertheless he had agreed, warning her to not draw attention to them. "We aren't like them, Susan. We can't afford to be seen as different." For once not calling her child.

"But we look just like them" She insisted.

"No, our race stretches across a billion years of history, and has traced every edge of the universe… they look like us. But be wary, they are not us." He said gruffly.

"But why must we hide so?"

"It is not them we are hiding from child, but those of our own people who would see us dragged back to Gallifrey and tried. However do not doubt that if these humans discover us, so will our own people." That was the end of the matter, and even though she'd gotten her way and hence enrolled in school, she still felt like she'd been scolded. She smiled wistfully, that was her grandfather.

.oOo.

Today she was afraid that what her grandfather had cautioned her against was coming to pass. Two humans and teachers of hers, Barbara and Ian, had followed her to where she and her grandfather lived in the junkyard.

She hung her head in resignation for the scolding of a lifetime – perhaps two, even – but her grandfather had just spoken with the two of them, then, grinning madly in a way that told her he was having fun – but trying to hide it – he got all four of them inside the TARDIS, disguised as a police box, and then they were gone, fleeing Earth, like Gallifrey before.

A/N: I don't have the TARDIS key, so I probably don't own it... But then why is it parked outside?